Cycling
How four cyclists collectively rode more than 670 miles in 25 hours
After the tightest finish in Red Bull Timelaps’ history, Team Innovation rode a mammoth 673.91 miles, while Avid BSCCers clocked 663.85 miles to win the Female category. Here's how they did it...
Red Bull Timelaps returned in a new virtual format for 2020, pitting teams of four against each other and the clock, as they raced to accumulate as much distance as possible between 12pm on Saturday, October 24 and 12pm on Sunday, October 25. In the event’s trademark twist, at 02:00 BST a ‘Power Hour’ was activated when the clocks went back to 01:00 UTC, and riders’ efforts were doubled for 60 minutes, offering competitors the chance to boost their team’s place on the leaderboard.
Employing modern technology to open its doors to more riders than ever before, Red Bull Timelaps 2020 saw 784 UK-based riders take to the roads and their turbo trainers in the world’s longest one-day cycling challenge, clocking a collective 95,433 miles between them.
It got very tight – it was too close for comfort
The finish was the closest the event has ever seen in its four-year history, and just 0.68 miles separated the top two teams. Seasoned racers Innovation ultimately prevailed over Race3R Steps though, riding a staggering 673.91 miles over the 25-hour period. In the Female category, Avid BSCCers managed 663.85 miles, beating their nearest competitors by more than 10 miles, while placing 4th overall. Here, team captains Gavin Richardson (Innovation) and Alice Thomson (Avid BSCCers) reveal how they did it...
How long have you ridden together as a team?
Gavin Richardson: “Innovation has been a long-term member on Zwift, but the four riders that we put in there were local friends from the North East who ride together. All of us – myself, Paul, Dave and Michael – generally do a massive amount of mileage; typically 14-20 hours a week.
Alice Thomson: “Mostly we know each other from racing. The team was originally a combination of Bristol South CC, which is my club, and Avid Sport. We originally had two riders from each (myself and Fiona from Bristol South CC and Emily and Lauren from Avid Sport) but then about a week or two before the event, my teammate from Bristol South, Fiona, injured her Achilles badly while running. We had a bit of a panic attempt to try and find someone who could sub in, or we thought we’d get Fiona to ride for 10 minutes and then we’d split the rest between the three of us. After the Welsh lockdown was announced, we got in touch with Illi [from pro team CAMS-Tifosi] because she lives in Wales, and should have been at the National Hill Climb Championships on Sunday. She said yes, so we got a super sub."
Did you have a strategy going into the race?
Riders were able to compete using a turbo trainer for the first time
© Patrik Lundin / Red Bull Content Pool
GR: "We’d planned to do it in my house in my training room but we cancelled that due to Covid. We actually used Discord to do it. We’d discussed it in detail how many hours we were going to do. But unfortunately, all my teammates stepped back from the Power Hour, so I was left to handle that."
AT: "We had a Zoom meeting the week before. Originally, I thought it would be great to do two-hour stints, and then in the night, you’d get six hours to sort yourself out and have a proper sleep. We talked to the Avid Sport coach and I had a chat with [ultra-distance cyclist] Jas Muller, who has done it before, and they both said, 'No, don’t do that, you need to go shorter. You’ll lose way too much power.' We settled on doing 40 minutes just below FTP. That was the biggest strategic thing we did. Most of the other women’s teams were doing hour turns or longer. We did do a couple of hour turns in the night just so that people could get some sleep, and the people who did the Power Hour could recover a little bit. Mostly, we were 40 minutes on, two hours off."
Did everything go to plan?
Those taking to the road had some horrible weather to contend with
© Leo Francis/Red Bull Content Pool
GR: "We had a WiFi issue that caused an early change over, and we also changed our strategy towards the end of the race to start doing hourly efforts, as opposed to two-hour efforts. This was just to demoralize our competitors but also see where we were in the standings every hour as we were coming to the end of the event. I think we played it pretty well and it got very tight. It was too close for comfort."
AT: "It was actually okay. I feel like we just got into the flow of it. That two hours off was only just long enough to eat something, stretch, rest and warm up and get going again. I had a list up, we had whiteboards and would tick off each stint we did."
What was the hardest part?
I think for all of us it was really motivating having the InternationElle team as competition. We could never quite work out where we were with them but we knew it was really close
GR: "Over the night was probably the worst period, just out of fatigue and tiredness. Myself and Paul have got more than 20,000km recorded this year cycling, but the lack of sleep combined with the general recovery of riding once every six hours was probably the hardest bit. We should have been able to cope but I think everybody gave everything, so it was the intensity mixed with the endurance."
AT: "My worst stint was my hour from 2-3 o'clock in the morning. It was hard. After the Power Hour, three of us did turns for an hour, so we got a slightly longer break. I slept for an hour then, and I think Lauren and Emily also had short naps. Illi said she cannot nap ever, so she just went through the whole thing with no sleep."
How did you stay motivated?
The leaderboard changing with every Strava upload added drama to events
© Leo Francis/Red Bull Content Pool
AT: "I think for all of us it was really motivating having the InternationElle team – we could never quite work out where we were with them. We knew it was really close. They were mostly having activities going up every hour, so they’d go ahead of us, and then we’d put some up and we’d go ahead. We knew we had to keep going and do everything on the turns and there was no time to ease up really."
"Also we just had a WhatsApp chat going. There were a lot of Ride Ons and really enthusiastic messages on our WhatsApp chat, cheering each other on."
Will you be attempting to defend your title next year?
GR: We’ll definitely do it online but we want to enter if it’s down on the real course because we’re as competitive as anyone out there. We’re as keen as mustard for a challenge and we’d be honoured if the opportunity arises.